RICHMOND — Virginia’s House of Delegates and Senate occupy opposite ends of the State Capitol, but they might as well be in alternate universes this year as they hit the halfway mark of the legislative session.
Wp Get the full experience.Choose your plan ArrowRight
The Republican-controlled House finished work Tuesday on a slate of bills that tighten restrictions on voting, abortion and school curriculums, and support the priorities of new Republican Gov. Glenn Youngkin.
In the Democratic-controlled state Senate, not so much. Other than the notable exception of a bill ending school mask mandates that hands Youngkin his biggest victory so far, the Senate has curbed or blocked much of the governor’s legislative agenda.
The two sides of Youngkin: Virginia's new governor calls for unity but keeps stoking volatile issues
“The real interesting part of the session begins tomorrow,” House Speaker Todd Gilbert (R-Shenandoah) said Tuesday. That’s when the two chambers start looking for ways to compromise on their starkly different political positions.
Advertisement
Story continues below advertisement
Tuesday marked “crossover,” the day when each chamber completes its own work — except for the budget, which comes later — and takes up the legislation passed by the other body.
Republicans in the House crowed about their record: “It’s a radical concept in politics: politicians doing what they said they’d do when they’re elected. But that’s just what we’ve done in the first half of this 2022 legislative session,” House Majority Leader Terry Kilgore (R-Scott) said in a prepared statement.
While Democrats in the Senate reveled in theirs: “We defeated virtually all of the Day One agenda,” said Sen. Janet D. Howell (D-Fairfax), chairwoman of the Senate Finance and Appropriations Committee, using Youngkin’s term for his priorities. “And I’m very pleased that we’ve done that.”
Youngkin addresses General Assembly, sets priorities for session as partisan clouds gather
The House plowed through hundreds of bills in the past few days, approving measures on party-line votes that seem destined to face hurdles in the Senate — including a repeal of the Clean Economy Act that Democrats passed last year to put the state on a course toward zero carbon emissions.
Advertisement
Story continues below advertisement
The Senate, on the other hand, has recently approved measures that face dim futures in the House, such as one calling for a referendum on stripping language out of the state constitution that bans same-sex marriage. House Republicans killed that chamber’s version of the bill.
Youngkin’s list of favored bills has faced tough going. His call for establishing a program to require executive branch agencies to set goals for eliminating regulations, for instance, won approval in the House but didn’t get out of committee in the Senate.
Va. Gov. Youngkin promises quick action on bill to make masks optional in schools
The pattern holds for several other marquee areas for Youngkin and other parts of the overall Republican agenda:
Schools. Democrats in the House stretched Monday’s already late floor session past 10 p.m. by staging a protest against HB787, a Youngkin-backed bill that prohibits teachers from teaching “any divisive concept.” One by one, Democrats offered amendments aimed at putting exceptions in the bill for teaching particular subject areas, such as the Lost Cause of the Confederacy or the three-fifths rule that declared the enslaved to be only a fraction of a person.
Advertisement
Story continues below advertisement
Republicans defeated each of the 10 amendments, but Democrats said they were trying to make the point that many important subjects could be considered divisive. The bill passed 50 to 49, with all Democrats and one Republican — Del. Carrie E. Coyner (R-Chesterfield) — voting against it.
The Senate has killed its version of the bill, so the matter is unlikely to get to Youngkin’s desk.
In addition, the House approved separate bills to establish laboratory schools in partnership with the state’s colleges and universities as well as charter schools that could be run by private companies. The Senate has approved a lab school bill but killed a charter school bill.
Youngkin takes office with immediate focus on education, thrilling some and terrifying others
Guns. The House approved HB509 to repeal the “red-flag law” approved by Democrats two years ago. That law allows a judge to temporarily confiscate weapons from someone deemed a threat to others or themselves.
Advertisement
Story continues below advertisement
Democrats argued that the law has been used 115 times since passage by law enforcement authorities all over the state, and credited it with preventing violence and suicides. But bill sponsor Del. Marie March (R-Floyd) invoked the Founding Fathers and said the policy “erodes our civil rights and encourages personal property confiscation.”
The repeal passed the House on a party-line vote. There was no similar bill in the Senate.
A Senate committee killed bills that sought to roll back gun restrictions that Democrats ushered in over the past two years. One defeated Republican bill would have lifted the current one-per-month limit on handgun purchases; another sought to prohibit local authorities from banning guns from city or county government buildings, parks and permitted events.
Story continues below advertisement
The Senate passed a couple of new gun-control measures, including one to ban the manufacture, sale or possession of plastic firearms, which cannot be detected by traditional screening devices.
Advertisement
A rare example of bipartisan cooperation on guns came with bills to prohibit the possession of firearms with the serial number intentionally removed, which passed both chambers by wide margins.
Voting. Several bills passed the House to tighten up voting policies passed by Democrats in the past two years. Those include measures to require a photo ID to cast a ballot; cut the period of no-excuse absentee voting to 21 days from the current 45 days; eliminate the permanent list of absentee voters; and scrap the use of drop boxes for casting absentee ballots.
Story continues below advertisement
The Senate passed a measure to automatically reinstate voting rights to felons upon completion of their sentences. Its prospects are dim in the House, which rejected an identical measure.
A Senate committee killed Republican bills to require voters to show photo identification at the polls.
Advertisement
Taxes. Though the state’s two-year budget has yet to come up for a vote, the House has approved measures that would authorize all of Youngkin’s tax-cut proposals: Doubling the standard deduction, one-time rebates for taxpayers, exempting the first $40,000 of military retiree pay, suspending an increase in the gasoline tax and eliminating the full 2.5 percent tax on groceries.
Story continues below advertisement
The Senate has been more cautious. While that chamber passed a measure to address the grocery tax, it only did away with the state’s 1.5 percent portion, leaving a 1 percent local portion in place. The Senate also punted the standard deduction question to next year so it can be studied.
Abortion. House Republicans approved two bills: HB212 would require “informed consent” before a woman can undergo an abortion, requiring the state to come up with language that health-care providers would have to distribute to their patients. And HB304 would require doctors to work to save the life of any fetus that was born alive after an attempted abortion.
Advertisement
A Senate committee did away with the one bill that directly sought to limit abortion rights. Brought by Sen. Amanda F. Chase (R-Chesterfield), it would have prohibited the procedure after 20 weeks except to save the life or health of the mother. Senate Democrats did not propose any measures to expand abortion rights.
Story continues below advertisement
But the full Senate unanimously passed a bill meant to prevent a surrogate mother from being forced to abort a fetus with abnormalities or reduce the number of fetuses she is carrying. The bill, brought by Sen. Mark J. Peake (R-Lynchburg), the father of quadruplets, would make it illegal for child surrogacy contracts to require a surrogate to do so against her will. The Senate passed the bill in 2020, but it never got out of committee in what was then a Democratic-controlled House.
House Republicans said Tuesday that they were pleased with the course of the session so far but recognize that much work lies ahead.
Advertisement
“I feel like we kept the promises we made when we ran,” Gilbert said. “We’ll just see what survives and what agreements and nuances can be brought to bear to try to find the path forward on certain pieces of legislation. Obviously there are differences of opinion at the core, but sometimes you can find ways to work together.”
Del. Lamont Bagby (D-Henrico), head of the Virginia Legislative Black Caucus, said he has been frustrated by what he called a lack of progress on important topics.
“Up to this point, I think this session could’ve been an email,” he said. “Other than the mask legislation, I can’t say that we’ve done much to address anyone’s concerns or challenges in the commonwealth. We missed a great deal of opportunities.”
With state coffers so flush with resources, lawmakers could have done more to target tax breaks at low-income people or those who need help most, he said. And he found debates about charter schools and “divisive” curriculums to be a distraction from the need to address crumbling infrastructure and school resources.
Del. Marcus B. Simon (D-Fairfax) said addressing the state budget, and ensuring funds reach the people who need it most, would be a key priority moving forward, along with making sure the Senate Democrats’ “brick wall” protects progress on issues like voting rights, immigration and gun violence prevention.
“My view is that session starts tomorrow. Everything we’ve done so far has been theater. Everything the House Republicans passed, you know the fate of most of those bills down the hall,” Simon said in an interview Tuesday. “I enjoy my role in the theater piece of it, but I think we’re going to start getting serious now.”
Karina Elwood contributed to this report.